1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for smoothly exchanging image files of users among a plurality of image pickup apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
The widespread use of digital cameras in recent years has been amazing, and it has become popular to store information of picked up images as a digital data file in a recording medium in a camera, such as a memory card. The images picked up by such an apparatus can be easily transmitted/received in the form of an image data file by using a communication medium or a network medium.
For example, a service of uploading images to a server on the Internet so that members can browse and exchange the images (hereinafter referred to as “photo sharing service”) has been widely used. By using this service, a user can easily receive an image captured by another user who participated in the same event or give an image captured by him/her to another user. In this way, images can be relatively easily exchanged among acquaintances or specific members.
On the other hand, owing to recent integration in devices for use in wireless communication, not only mobile personal computers (so-called notebook PCs) but also printers, mobile information apparatuses (PDA: personal digital assistance), digital cameras, and mobile phones are provided with a communication function using a wireless LAN. Accordingly, apparatuses that have conventionally had a function of communicating with a specific apparatus only via wired connection, such as a USB (universal serial bus) connection, can perform wireless data communication with various apparatuses.
The following method is an example of a method for acquiring an image file performed between image pickup apparatuses having a wireless communication function. That is, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-223814 discloses a method for performing wireless communication between one's camera and a nearby user's camera in a capturing site and automatically exchanging information for accessing each other's camera later, such as an e-mail address.
According to the method described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-223814, the user needs to start up an e-mail software in accordance with the access information or access a server providing the photo sharing service from his/her PC so as to select a desired image and to store the image in his/her PC, which is complicated.
When users who participated in the same event exchange images, they exchange images of that event. If the above-described technique is applied to this case, a receiver of images needs to select images of the event one by one from among images of various events so as to obtain the images, which is complicated. The user who captures images can group or narrow down the images in units of events in advance. In that case, however, the user needs to perform an operation for the grouping each time, which is complicated.